


La Famiglia va sempre protetta

by SaintSaens



Series: Dentro Questo Cassettino [1]
Category: Trust (TV 2018)
Genre: (not for Leo/Regina just to be clear), Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Family Feels, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, I don't call out the shots, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Mother-Son Relationship, Pre-Canon, Regina did, this is for Primo and Leo/Regina
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-18 18:21:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 20,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28871496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SaintSaens/pseuds/SaintSaens
Summary: "Primo. There's only one thing that matters to me. It's that you stay safe." he admits to the night "It's the only thing I care about. You stay safe, you hear me? You can go and do whatever you want in the city, I don't have a say in any of this, I shouldn't have a say in any of this, but you stay safe. That's the only thing I'm asking. That you stay safe. That you come to me, if you're in trouble. You do that, ok? Promise, me. Primo. I need you to promise me this."Was it really surprising that, when the call finally came, Leo wasn't there?
Relationships: Leonardo & Primo Nizzuto, Leonardo/Regina (Trust), Primo Nizzuto & Regina, Primo Nizzuto/Original Male Character(s)
Series: Dentro Questo Cassettino [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2117310
Comments: 16
Kudos: 36





	1. L'Estate più calda

**Author's Note:**

> This came up because of the angsty ending of my [5+1 Primo & Leo's background fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27556402). I couldn't leave well enough alone, and then it was about something found family, Regina's relation with Primo and yeah it's a mess <3 (in case you don't want to read it, long story short: Primo admits to Leo he is gay. And Leo makes him promise to tell him when he's in trouble. Because he's scared for him. Oh yes the angst is real.)
> 
> Chapters titled from Pasolini's _Qual è l'idea felice che mi risveglia?_ which left me lying on the ground.  
> Also Primo is a little shit with 0 chill, and I feel like he would rather die than let people know his "weaknesses" (which is why everything says _implied_ in the tags. That idiot will keep everything bottled up nice and tight inside).  
> This is the first part with Leo and Regina's side of that thing in 3 chapters.Primo's will be coming up with 1 chapter. Heads up for his part: it's more detailed somehow, and includes mentions of rape/non-con elements...
> 
> It's set 11 years before canon! (I'm basing the character's age on the actors' when it was filmed: in Trust, Primo is 34; Leo, 44; Regina 48. Also, not related, but I'm in love with the idea that Regina is older than Leo <3)

"Pronto?" 

Regina looked up at the clock, ticking away above her. There was no moon outside. It was impossible to tell the time.

Her fingers trembled as she held onto the phone.

"Pronto?" She repeated tightly, in the silence.

A breath came from the other end of the line, deep, slow. But she could hear no other sounds. Regina exhaled through her clenched teeth. There was no point listening in. It was just a game, she thought. A game, and her fear, building up. 

Francesco was still sleeping. She was about to put the phone back on the receiver, when there was something more, finally.

" _-a"_

Regina blinked.

She had always feared this. Those calls, in the night. What they might mean. Who was at the other end of the line. 

She tried to breathe and think. If she focused, there were other noises coming to her, a street, crowded, or just loud, definitely some cars driving by. Some people talking too? But it was too far. She frowned. She held her bathrobe close to herself.

"Who is this?" she snapped under her breath.

The fear wouldn't win, not after so many years, not after so nights spent by Leonardo's side. Not now, that she was a mother, that she had Francesco to look after. "I'm telling you now-" 

Before she could go any further, there was a cough, dry and painful, ragged, at the other end of the line. 

"Leo -"

Regina felt cold. 

"Primo?"

It was disbelief, coloring her tone.

A month that Primo had gone to Rome, again. A month with maybe one call, or two if Leo had managed to reach him, again. Nothing almost, if they didn't push for it. And now this? She felt her heart give. One somersault. And then nothing.

"Primo? Is that you?"

She held the phone closer to her ear, as if maybe she could go through, reach out for him. That damned kid, she thought. She closed her eyes, intent on listening in. What could she do? What could she do, for him?

"Primo, caro, what is it?" she whispered, urgency now burning in her guts. It didn't matter, that her voice rose, that maybe Francesco would hear, wake up, go back to crying. It was the middle of the night, and Primo was calling. She couldn't even start thinking about what it meant, for him. "Talk to-" 

An ambulance rushed by on Primo's end of the line, blaring loudly in the night. Regina jumped. She almost lost her grip on the phone. She could have sworn too, that Primo had taken a sharp breath at the noise. Too sharp, too tight. 

Leo should be here for this, Regina thought.

For him.

For her.

Her heart was beating, muffling everything around her.

"Primo -"

"I'm fine." His voice sounded strange, aloof. There was not a rasp in his voice, not a waver. Not a tone. "Tell Leo I'm fine." 

And the line rang dead. Just like that.

He had hung up. Before she could try to get him to explain, to tell her, what was the matter. 

Regina blinked. Primo's voice echoed.

_Tell Leo I'm fine._

If only she could believe him. She knew him, God save them all, but she knew him.

Why are you lying?

She didn't go back to sleep.

"Primo called last night" 

Leo had just been about to leave, rushing out as soon as he had stepped in. Something about Salvatore and money. Always Salvatore and money. Regina had made him a cup of coffee. She had been waiting for him. And now, in the bright morning, warmth already rising from the earth and choking them with dirt, Regina felt brittle with her worried husband in front of her and her blissful son beside her. 

She felt hollowed, from the void around them all.

She wondered, about Primo.

In Rome, alone.

Her heart hadn't slowed down. That anxiety had never left. He was still haunting her, that idiot. So she had to ask. Just to be sure. That he was fine. That it was normal. That he was alright. It was just another one of their thing, that she would never pry about. Because she wanted to think she trusted them enough.

Her guts, that morning, were telling her otherwise. She didn't want to wonder, whether it was the trust she had put in them, or the fac that Primo had claimed to be fine, which she was putting into question now.

"Why did he call, Leo?"

Leonardo choked on his macchiato. He cursed, as a few drops ended on his linen trousers. He looked disturbed, as if just awakened.

"What?" he croaked out.

"Why did Primo call, Leo?" Regina repeated, tired. "It was 3 in the morning. It could have woken Francesco, it almost did -" She sighed. "I thought the little back deals in Rome hadn't succeeded. That there was nothing for you up there to do." 

"We're not-" Leo started, before shaking his head. He didn't even try anymore, to tell her to stop putting her nose into this business of theirs. Salvatore still thought she was willingly ignorant of it all. He didn't know her. Leo knew though, and sometimes he would push back, maybe to protect her or to remind her, to be careful how she talked, who was around.

She looked at him as he leaned against the kitchen's counter, defeated. He loved her too much to tell her what to do, what to say. He listened to her, her sweet tired lover. She was his curse. And yet, he held onto her like nothing else mattered. She wondered if she wasn't pushing too much sometimes. But this was for Primo. She couldn't let it go.

"What did he say?" Leo sighed, dabbing at his trousers, mindlessly.

"He said he was fine."

Leonardo stopped in his track, staring at her, eyes wide.

The fear was finally there too, now.

"What?" 

"You're parroting." she accused him.

He didn't move.

"Is that -" he tried "is that it?" 

"Were you expecting more?" Her hands tightened into fists on the table. She bit her lips. It was getting difficult to handle. Leo's errands in the night, her son crying, alone, and Primo, always Primo. Even now, she couldn't let him go. Even when he was away in Rome.

Leonardo was to her side in an instant, coffee and stains forgotten. "Amore, no," He took her hands in his, soothing her tight grip. "Amore, I didn't expect anything." he whispered to her. She felt herself break a bit, shoulders hunching in, her worry reaching out to his. She shouldn't be so angry with him. She knew it. "Primo's in Rome." Leo said again, voice barely wavering. "He's just, in Rome. There's nothing going on, I don't know of anything that could -"

Regina saw, when he understood.

Leo stopped and swallowed. He knew, she could see it, he had to know, just like she did. There was no reason for Primo to be calling, unless -

Unless it was necessary.

"I need to check something." Leo said.

"Check what?"

"Primo!" He was already out of the kitchen when he replied to her.

"Why?"

Regina got up, trembling all over, feeling drained all of a sudden, and leaned against the doorway as Leo picked up the phone.

"Why?" she asked again.

He looked at her with wide eyes before turning back to the phone to dial a number. He didn't reply.

"Something happened then." she whispered.

Leonardo passed a hand through his hair, as the ringtone echoed in his ear.

He didn't reply.

Primo didn't answer.

Regina wanted to cry.

Regina wondered, sometimes, if she wasn't irrational. If she wasn't mad.

With her newborn baby, and Leo out, she did wonder at some point, if it wasn't her mind which had suddenly played all its cards to crack her open and let all her fears take off under the midnight sky. She could have made it up, after all. Primo calling from Rome. It had never happened before. That stupid kid never called. She was sure, she could have made it all up, with her fear and her mind, racing on that void by their side. Because she did question, too often, too many times, what he was doing, and where he was.

He wasn't a kid, he wasn't hers either and she knew she shouldn't.

But it was all the same, to her.

Maybe in the future, they would laugh about it. Ten years apart more or less, in age, it's nothing. She shouldn't feel like this about him.

But ten years apart is a lot when you are young. It's a lot more, when you are a young woman, getting older, and there are still no children in your arms, unlike all the other mothers around. It's a lot more, when there is a lonely kid trespassing around and your heart worries, even if you have no rights over him.

Regina knew she had been irrational when she had taken it upon herself to see Primo grow up, with Leonardo. She knew she was being irrational now. Primo wasn't a kid, and he wasn't even hers, to begin with. But it was as if she had latched onto him, took him for herself, as the child she couldn't have, before Francesco finally arrived. And now, she couldn't let him go.

Primo was her first son, almost.

So maybe, maybe she did make it up, that call at night.

Because she was tired, because she was a mother and Francesco might be her child, but she had seen Primo grow up and that thankless kid had left, without a word and it weighted on her. She trusted him, she knew him, he could survive anything, he would come through, whatever he did. But still, not a word. With Rome hovering over him, she wondered if it wouldn't swallow him all, and they would never hear of him.

Maybe, it wouldn't break her, when Primo picked up. He would mutter. She would just sigh, and Leo would look at her, heartache shining through his eyes, and she would take Francesco in her arms, and she would go to sleep, in bed. She might just be tired. And it was all too much to handle anyway, even for her. She might just have found the constraints of her strength. She could do many things, but that, it might be too much for her. It might be the limits of her powers.

Primo would mock her for all this useless worry.

She would deserve it. She would smile back, she wanted to think. It wouldn't hurt her.

Or at least, she wanted to believe it would hurt less, than if he were never to pick up again.

Leonardo had to leave that morning, in the end.

Salvatore was bearing down on him those days, even more than before. Regina wanted to sneer at the theatrics he put on.

It was almost as if Francesco's birth, and Primo's departure, had turned something sour in the man. Leo could never stay home those days, he could never see his son. It was almost as if Salvatore wanted to remind him he owned their time, he owned their lives. Their little family, too, in the end, was his to do as he pleased with. They wouldn't have what they do now, if it weren't for him. Regina would have bared her teeth at him.

Maybe that's why Leo always made sure to never push it. Maybe that's why that day too, he left before Salvatore could show up on their doorstep.

Regina could tell, deep down, that the man was just bitter he never had a son himself. She wondered how he felt, when after taking Primo from him, piece by piece, taming the animal no one wanted to reign in, Leonardo and her had had their own child to show to the family. They had done everything that was expected of him, when it came down to it. They had a son, and his heir too, in a sense. Maybe that's why he was so hard on them now.

But Regina wanted to believe that with Leo, they were holding strong together. Salvatore could try, with all his tricks and his words, but he would never break what they had done. The family they had built, in spite of everything, even him.

It didn't prevent him from trying, still. Salvatore was always asking for more from Leonardo. More money to be found, more strategies to bring some in, as if life revolved around it.

Leo was dead on his feet.

Usually, it was Regina who helped him. She was strength incarnated, or so he told her. It made her snicker. She was peace for him, he would whisper. It was hard to imagine, considering the storm she was keeping in. Everyone could see it. Leo, well, he saw something else, another realm of her that she couldn't begin to understand.

She would be herself, and he would lean on her, hold her close. He said she was his harbor, embedded in stone, stable, even when facing a storm. She wanted it to be true. She wished it were true.

But not that day. In this dry summer day, she wasn't anything more than the sum of their distress, thread-bare and patched up with false hopes and unfounded reasonings.

She wasn't any better than him, unfortunately. That day, she was an extension of him. She felt his worry, she felt his fretting. Her, who used to settle him, was going to pieces. Just like him. Her worry met his, it grew and grew, and she couldn't begin to know where to stand and where to crumble down. When he left, despair gutting him open, she took his place and his emotions; she kissed him goodbye, and sat down besides the phone, in the dark. 

Primo hadn't picked up, when Leo had tried. 

Maybe, she didn't know why, but she felt that for her, he would be there. He would answer. It was just the matter of who was calling. Maybe, she would get through to him.

She tried calling him too.

But still, he wasn't picking up. He was silent.

That day was lost to her.

She knew she was there for Francesco, when he needed her. She fed him, she hugged him, she shushed him. But in her arms, it wasn't really Francesco she could see. Or he wasn't alone, at least, her little kid. She held him close, and she talked to him. She told him it was alright. She told him it would be fine. She was here. She was. He would be alright, truly.

In her arms, that day, with the phone by her ear and her son in her arms, she looked for someone else, another soul to be held close. A ghost beneath her fingertips, turning to sand, disappearing...

A little kid she hadn't protected. She closed her eyes. Her heart was giving in. 

And Primo still wasn't answering.

Regina wondered, if she hadn't failed her family that night. That week. Slowly letting him get away and not following.

The news from Rome would painfully trickle in. Regina had never really cared for it, before that call came in.

With Primo disappearing, impossible to reach, she became almost obsessed with it. She would read the newspaper as soon as it was dropped on her door. She would look for anything, any mention of someone unknown in Rome. Something, anything. There were tensions in the street, the usual kidnappings.

There was the palazzo in Rome. Regina read it all.

A body burnt to ashes.

A flat destroyed.

Blood.

So much blood.

On the night Primo had called.

She couldn't let it go.

Leo started taking the newspaper from her, reading it to her, just so she wouldn't have to see, just so she could ignore maybe, the photos of that terrible scene. They never printed the ones of the body. The flat though, it was terrifying. She knew too, after a while, that Leo would ignore some articles, focus on others. For her sake, she could see in his eyes the strain of it all. It weighted on him too, she knew, to realize there were some things she just couldn't make it through.

She wondered absurdly what they would do. If it was Primo.

In Rome.

Dead.

Alone.

It wasn't.

It wasn't.

He had been away, was what he said afterwards. Just that. He had been away. 

He was fine.

It had taken a week for Leonardo to catch up with him.

Regina stopped counting the nights spent standing by the phone and trying to reach him. Always trying. Never succeeding.

When Leo saw the bill, he didn't comment on it. She squared her jaw. He gripped her hand in his. _They could do this_ he was telling her. She did what she could to believe, too. It was difficult.

And so, they would try. In turns. Days, nights. Whenever they passed the phone.

She couldn't tell anymore.

In the end, it had taken a week for Leonardo to catch him with a phone call. Primo had been away. Working he said. Leonardo didn't comment. They didn't ask what job he could find in Rome.

Leo didn't ask much at all. He asked after his health, after Fifty. He didn't dig much, it was just another conversation. Just another call. Nothing to show the worry they had gone through. Regina stood beside him, listening silently, wringing her hands. That evening, she had left the dinner to burn in the oven. It didn't really matter.

Leo didn't ask why Primo had called that night. Regina's eyes were hard by his side. She judged him, she wanted to take the phone away from him. He must have known too, when he looked back at her, helplessness overwhelming his gaze, a cry for help to reach for Primo without scaring him away again. Her eyes were telling him he should ask. His were telling her, it's too much, too soon, not now. Not when we've just reached him. Not when he could still flee.

Regina gritted her teeth. Maybe he was a bit of a coward. Maybe she was too harsh. Maybe he was just relieved that the idiot was alive. She couldn't fault him for that.

He didn't ask when he hang up that time.

Regina didn't comment.

It had to be good enough, for now. Even if it didn't settle her heart.

The palazzo she had wondered about, was nothing more than a vendetta. Some people in Rome, fighting for power over the central neighborhoods. All for coke.

The body had been a prominent new investor from Sicily apparently. Six of his men had been found dead in the following week.

Just a vendetta.

Just criminals doing their part.

It was over now.

And Primo was alive.

It didn't settle her heart.

Exactly one week later, and Primo was back. He didn't warn them. One day, he just was there. 

They didn't know, until he came.

Regina caught up with him as he was leaving Salvatore's house. The basket of freshly made cheese, her only excuse to go there then, weighted against her hip, heavy, trying, but she still stopped right in the middle of the path and called out to him.

The sun was burning, unrelenting. Her heart was thudding, loudly. 

Primo's car slowed down, and he lowered his window as she stepped aside. He didn't look at her once.

But she did. She looked him up and down, tried to get a good look at his eyes, behind his silly locks of hair, his dark sunglasses. 

She could see how his shirt was buttoned up all the way, and how he hadn't even taken off his jacket before driving away.

She frowned, but then again, Salvatore had always been a sore spot.

She placed her crate by her feet, and got a hand on the window's sill. Anything, to keep him here.

"Are you alright, Primo?" 

The question seemed to bring him back to reality. He blinked slowly, his sunglasses dropping an inch down his nose. She could see his eyes, pupils wide, as he stared back. The bags under his eyes, those he couldn't hide from her now.

He was pale.

It would be Rome, Leo had said.

"Why?" he asked, cautiously. Regina could hear in his voice the lingering tension and care he would use, sometimes when he was tired, when it was too much. The care that meant he was protecting himself. That meant he wasn't entirely there with them.

She leant closer. Primo's hand tightened briefly around the wheel. She saw his jaw close tighter too. For all of a 20 something years old prideful man, he still needed to work on his control, it almost made her laugh. Or maybe she just knew him too much, not to see it. Maybe she was actually looking for it, unlike others around him.

She tried not to think too much about it.

"We were worried. For you." She told him, softly.

Primo's breath slowed. 

"Why?" 

Regina bit her lips. Leo had told her to let it go, not to mention it. It must have been a mistake, was what he claimed. He had said that as he looked like he hadn't slept for the past days, as he looked strung out and stressed. Tired, waiting on someone else to come and quiet their minds, tell them the truth at last. A mistake, he would say. But Regina wasn't convinced. He wasn't either, it was just a show he put up. For her mostly, for himself a bit. She couldn't let it go on, though. She found that she cared too much about Primo.

And with him here beneath her eyes, she knew it wasn't that. Mistakes, he could make them. He had.

But not like that one.

"When you called -" she tried.

Primo's face turned blank, she saw him leaning back in his seat as she spoke up. His muscles relaxed, too much for it not to be voluntary. He was trying to make it look like her words didn't faze him. She knew then that she had lost her way to him.

He shrugged.

"It's fine."

He started his car again. Regina's fingers trembled with its rumbling. She wondered if it wasn't hiding the tension slowly seeping from Primo's limbs.

"You remember, right? Primo?"she pressed, undeterred. He was still there, she could still get through. She had to try, if not for him, than for Leo. For her. "You called, ten days ago." 

But Primo was focused on the dashboard. "Right" he said "It's fine.".

Regina's hand reached out and caught his forearm, as he put the car into gears. Primo blinked at her hand, not breathing.

His skin was clammy. She wondered if he would lash out, if he would bite. She felt his muscle tremble, beneath her fingers. As if it was hard for him, to let her touch him, like this.

"Primo" she tried, her voice not as steady as she would have liked. It scared her to her bones, that Primo would react like that, to her, out of everyone. After all they had been through, together. After all she had done for him. After all those times she had patched him up. Fed him. Given him a roof, a bed, when he needed it. "You promised Leonardo." she said again "If you're in trouble, you call. Remember? You did right. You called. I'm glad." 

She had to try.

Primo paled. Regina held on tighter. Maybe he didn't know Leo had told her. Maybe she had overstepped. But she hoped he would consider their little home a safe space. Since Leo had brought him in, bloody and shivering, all those years ago, she had hoped. She still hoped she had at least given that to him. A haven to rest in. To be safe. That he could still consider it his. Where he could be himself. Even now, as he was leaving them slowly, one trip after another into the big city.

She squeezed his arm, telling him she was there, with him, now.

"You call again, when you need to, Primo."

He didn't reply, but he did wait for her to take her arm out of his car, before he rushed away, in a trail of dust and smoke. She felt like maybe she had gotten something through.

She didn't know what. But it had to be enough for now.

"He didn't remember, Leo." Regina was walking around the kitchen table, looking down at Francesco in her arms. His little dark eyes were wide, the eyes of a newborn baby, innocent, watching. Only the void of a pupil looking back. Taking everything in.

It reminded her of Primo's.

She felt cold.

Leo didn't say anything. He was peeling potatoes. She could see him thinking.

"Primo didn't remember." She repeated.

Leo sighed, shakily. "It was a mistake. It must have been a mistake. He would have said, otherwise." he muttered looking down at his hands. "God knows what he spends his time doing in Rome. It's nothing. A mistake. Nothing else."

Regina sent a glare to the back of his head. His hands were trembling, he wasn't fooling anyone, not even himself to begin with. He was dragging with him a brewing anxiety that had picked up as soon as Primo had appeared, an anxiety which had yet to go away, although the man himself was nowhere to be found now. 

There was also, beneath all that, the worry in his eyes, the care in his words, when he spoke to everyone. Even her. Regina wanted to shake him and tell him to stop evading his fears. And kiss him, look at him and kiss, him, because she was here. And he wasn't alone, in this, out of everything.

"You didn't hear him." She said. "You made him promise, Leo. It wasn't a mistake. "

His shoulders hunched forward over the plate. He carefully laid the knife down. Regina could see, the way his fingers tightened on nothing. But still, she couldn't let it go. She needed him to know.

"He listens to you, Leo. He called."

Maybe it was hard to hear, to understand the complete depth of what was happening. But Leo had made him promise, and Primo had trusted him on that.   
Even if when it mattered, Leo couldn't be there for him, Regina had been. It had to be better than nothing. 

It had to mean something.

For Primo, for Leo. It had to be good enough.

For them all.

For now. 

She hoped she was right. That it was somehow good enough.

Primo left.

He went back to Rome, or so it was said. There were no calls.

Regina tried to believe it was for the best. That he was alright.

Leo didn't fare as well as her.

But it was fine, she wanted to believe. She was there for him too.

Even if it was hard.

They would make it through.

That's what you did, when you were a family.

_(That's the only thing I'm asking. That you stay safe. That you come to me, if you're in trouble. You do that, ok? Promise, me._ _Primo.)_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading this! I hope you liked it, even if it gets a bit all over the place. The next chapters hopefully will be more focused? I swear I started only wanting to write about Regina and Leo reacting to Primo's whatever-the-fuck-that-phonecall-was, because Primo's part was already clear to me, but then I had to delve into Regina's relation with Primo and so here we go...
> 
> [side note because it won't leave me alone: I really am bugged by the fact that Regina in the serie has one (1) son of 11 years old. And she is around 48, if we take into account the actress's age?? Like. She would have had Francesco when she was 37?!? Which is sometimes considered old even now? Which I know for a fact was considered very old even too late back then??? Just?! omg. That character deserves so much more than an appearance in two episodes. She's a goddess. Her life would have been a fight at that point. I'm in awe.]


	2. Un piacevole dormiveglia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: change of point of view for this chapter! It seems I can't let go of Leo? He's a mess. It's so nice to write someone like him X) (and I love writing Primo and Regina from his pov. He's so anxious about the former's well being and so in adoration with the later <3)
> 
> Actual warning: it's in this chapter that there is **implied domestic violence.**  
>  Also, Primo being a little shit...does this need a warning?

A month goes by, then another. 

Primo waltz in and steps out, on Salvatore's call or his own whim. More of the latter recently. 

It's not always for the best, but Primo doesn't let it faze him. 

"I'm sorry" Leo says from the doorway.

Primo is sitting against the back of his car, mechanically cleaning his riffle.

"What are you sorry for, Leone, eh?" He sniffs, but his hands keep on cleaning the riffle and the gestures are sharp and focused. Leonardo feels tired. Salvatore had laughed. Everyone present had laughed too. And Primo had stood silent, watching on. His eyes had barely blinked, his hands still by his sides.

He hadn't shrugged off the pats.

"It was a good idea." Leo amends, walking closer to the younger man. 

"Don't talk about what you don't know." 

Leo stops, surprised at the tone. He frowns, under the scalding sun. 

"It was, Primo." Because he does think so. To have secured a place at an Avitabile's meeting. Avitabile. One of the main leaders of Rome. Primo had told Salvatore they could send a message this way. It was a foot in the door for their small community. 

But Salvatore had laughed at him. He hadn't believed him. No one did. 

It was too big. But Leo wanted to think -

"Shut it, Leone." 

Leonardo watches him fold his riffle and store it back in his car, neatly wrapped in a bag. 

There's nothing amiss, with Primo. Or rather, everything is all too precise, all too controlled. It's like he won't let go. Leo has always known him to be careful, wary of everything, of everyone. 

But now, this little scene, back with Salvatore and now out here, it seems exhausting. As if he wasn't allowing himself to breathe.

Leo remembers what Regina had told him, of the last time they had spoken together. What she had seen.

His dark eyes. His pale skin. 

Rome and all its consequences.

"Come home" Leo says, naturally, too naturally almost, "let's have a drink, before you go back to Rome. Regina won't be back for a couple hours, she's at the Sarrace's, with Carla. They've had a boy too, did you know? He will be going to school with Francesco."

Primo closes his trunk."I need to stay here." _in case Salvatore has a use for me_ , goes unsaid, but Leonardo hears it clear.

He shakes his head. "It can wait. Right now, no one's in a state to give orders and directions back there." 

Primo looks up, as Leo steps down and stops by the passenger's door of his car. 

"Let's go" he tells him.

Primo looks at him, then he huffs. But Leo is glad he doesn't comment, doesn't protest. Primo gets in and turns on the car. He leans over, to unlock Leo's door. Leo breathes a bit more.

It's a first step. 

He hopes Regina will help.

"How did you manage that anyway?" Leonaro blurts out. 

They've been enjoying the evening in the kitchen, drinking, talking. Well, Leo was talking. About Regina, and Francesco, and the goats. Regina had just come back. She had looked at Primo in silence, and sent a glance at Leo, before going to put Francesco to bed. 

"Get me a glass." she had told them. 

Leo had complied. Primo hadn't reacted.

To be fair, he had yet to say a word when Leo asks. 

He drummed his fingers on his glass. 

Leo doesn't let it bother him, he has known him too long. He knows, when Primo needs to hear someone talk, even if he doesn't listen. He knows to wait and fill in the silence, when Primo needs the time to find his thoughts, maybe Leo dares to hope, his words. 

But it's been a few hours, and even Leo is tired. Sometimes, there's nothing like a good old question to get to the heart of the matter.

Regina moves around in the bathroom, singing softly to Francesco.

Primo shrugs and takes a sip of his drink. 

He doesn't reply.

"Primo..." 

Leo needs to know. To be sure that he isn't done for yet. That Primo didn't play too far, didn't reach too high. That he will come back alive, if they let him leave Calabria. Leo doesn't know how it could have gone, how it had worked. The fact that Primo here had been invited to such a meeting didn't sit well with him. What he could have said, he could have done, that would have prompted such an honour.

And always, at the back of his mind, that call. 

What Primo could have promised, Leo didn't let himself dwell on that. 

Suddenly there's a smile, cold and precise on Primo's lips, which doesn't reach his eyes, and Leo fears. He fears for him, for everything, for what this stupid kid could have done and that he was not saying. 

"Right place, right time"

"Right place, right time" 

Leo stares. 

Primo's smile is empty, his eyes are shining darkly. 

There's something missing, Leo can feel it. 

He stares at Primo, at his steady hand, his imperceptible breath. As if he were lying in wait. For something to corner him. To jump at his throat and devour him. There's something missing, in his voice, when he speaks. As if his tone didn't match his spirit, his deepest feelings. Leo can't point to it. 

But there's something missing. 

Leo exhales, tries to focus on what he has in front of his eyes and what he can work out for himself.

Primo is alive, for now. 

He hears Regina muttering something, walking back toward them.

It will have to do. For now.

Leo exhales. 

"Primo, just don't get yourself -"

Before he can say anything else, there is a knock on the door, small, a rasp almost. 

Primo is sitting up in his chair. Leo raises his hand, to prevent him from taking out his gun, as they listen. 

"What is it?" Regina whispers from the corridor. 

Leo shushes her, and yes, there's the rasp again.

"Leo -" Regina starts saying, sounding frustrated, but he is already standing up and reaches for the door, picking up his riffle as he goes. 

It could be anything, but the weight around the knock, its faintness. It's almost too calculated. 

Leo glances back. He doesn't say anything when he sees Primo leaning from the kitchen's doorway, his arm by his side. Regina stands behind him, Francesco still in her hold. He had never realized before. How close he could bring his family to trouble, with their futile business. 

Primo doesn't look behind him. He straightens, tall, hiding Regina and Francesco with a step forward. He nods for Leo to open the door. 

"Leo, don't -" Regina whispers urgently as he puts his hand on the doorknob, looking expectantly at Primo. Primo looks steadily forward. He doesn't back down. Leo briefly wonders how he hadn't seen it happening, the change, from a kid who would kill only because he thought he had to, because it was what needed to be done, to a man who is ready to do it at the slightest inconvenience. 

It cuts his breath, to see Primo like this. _What did I miss?_ he thinks. 

Before he can say anything, he hears Primo's gun being cocked. Regina hisses "Primo, Good lord put that back, don't, please. I know who -" 

Primo's grip tightens. His eyes darken.

Leo yanks the door open, holding onto his riffle. He is expecting many things, a messenger, a threat or maybe even for a shot to be fired. 

But he blinks instead. 

Under the passing moonlight, it's Anna Maria. Who lives two doors down. 

"What?" Leo flounders. 

He takes a step outside, looks around, but there is no one else but Anna Maria, standing still in the dark. 

She looks caught out, in her bathrobe. And she huddles into herself, eyes wide. She's shaking in the cold air of the hills. 

Leo is shoved aside by Regina, who hands him Francesco without a word. 

"Anna" she croons "Come, come, don't stand there in the cold. And don't mind these two idiots, I swear." She grumbles, trying to coax the young woman in.

But Anna doesn't budge, even with Regina's pressing. She looks at Primo and she doesn't blink. 

Leo doesn't know what to think. Everything is so unexpected. 

But he suddenly remembers, they shouldn't have been here tonight. Primo should have stayed at Salvatore's. And him, he had been invited to celebrate with Guido, for the birth of his son, at their home. There was only Regina left. She would have been back by now, to put Francesco to bed. 

He looks at the women, and suddenly it feels like maybe Primo and him had overstepped.

Anna Maria is silent and pale. She doesn't look away from Primo. There might be tears in her eyes. Shame. Leo remembers, Primo and Anna Maria had been at school together.

Primo relaxes against the wall. His lips are thin, but he puts his gun away swiftly. 

"Might as well come in, now that you're here." 

His voice is sweet and curt. He is disdainful, as if she was nothing more than a bother. Regina tenses at his words.

Anna Maria breathes in sharply, her eyes not leaving Primo's figure in the doorway. She takes a step, then another, and Regina holds her, guides her in, and takes Francesco's back from Leo's useless arms. 

They both look like they've walked into a trap. Leo doesn't know what to do with himself. Regina appears ready to fight until the first blood is drawn.

Primo just looks bored to death. 

Leo closes the door slowly. In the light of the house, as bad as it is, now, he sees how shaken Anna Maria is. Her hair in disarray, her hands trembling. She is keeping a tight hold on her bathrobe. It looks like she ran, all the way here, without thinking.

Leo's mouth turns dry. He looks at Regina, because he knows, deep down, what this is about.

It's always hard to see, but it's here still. Haunting them. In hiding.

Regina doesn't say anything. Her eyes don't leave Anna Maria, and Francesco starts moving around in her arms. 

Primo nods back toward the kitchen. 

"Come and sit" he says, and as if that was it, Anna Maria goes. 

She doesn't say anything. 

Leo has to blink. 

Regina stares at Primo. 

Primo shrugs at her, as Anna Maria walks past him and into the kitchen. 

Leo can see the faint tremor in Regina's frame. She looks ready to snap at Primo for the way he is acting, and Leo winces. What did I miss, he keeps on thinking. The words, the manners... This Primo here and now is one step away, one step too far, from the one they used to know. Before Rome. One step closer too, to Salvatore and his dead brother, Ludovico. Leo doesn't know what to do with that. How to handle that.

_What did I miss?_

Maybe he hadn't done enough for Primo, before he had let him go on his own. 

Regina straightens, sends a cold glare at Primo and strides forward. She ignores him and looks at Anna Maria. 

"I'm putting Francesco to bed. I'll be back. One second."

Primo doesn't seem to care, only turns around and goes back to sit down at the table.

When Leo steps inside the kitchen, Anna Maria has a glass in her hand and she is hunched slightly over. Guarded too, like Regina had been. Primo takes a sip of his own glass, refilled. 

Anna Maria looks like she is waiting for a sentence to be passed. Leo has never seen her like that. But he knows what she looks like. It leaves a bitter taste in his mouth.

"Stop hovering" Primo tells him "Sit down already."

Anna Maria startles a bit at his words, and when Leo takes his place by her side carefully. He has never felt like this. So out of place. In his own home.

He hates it. He hates it all. 

"So" Primo says suddenly "How is Cesario doing?" 

Anna Maria takes a sharp breath in. Leo feels his throat close in. 

Primo takes a cigarette from his jacket and lights it. 

"I heard the shop wasn't doing so well now. Must be all those factories up North."

Leo stares at him.

Anna Maria stays silent.

"Drink up" Primo tells her. She picks up her glass, forgotten, and takes a swallow. 

And Primo just watches her.

She still doesn't answer. 

"Do you know, Leo" Primo says out of the blue "When someone's in shock, you can make them do anything you want them to." 

Leonardo feels cold. 

Primo goes on, looking blankly at Anna Maria. "You just have to say the words. Suggest it maybe." 

Anna Maria is silent, her frame more tense than a second ago. She hears, but doesn't speak. Leo feels something bitter coalescing in his guts. 

Primo taps his glass, slowly. Loud. 

She takes another swallow. All of this is mechanical.

Leo doesn't like it at all. He thinks about Regina, putting Francesco to bed by now, and Primo here, watching everything. 

Judging.

Leo feels like he is being jostled around, that he missed a mark. With Primo, more than anyone else around.

"Just use the right formulation. The right incentive..." he hears. "Anna Maria, a refill?" Primo's tone turns short, suddenly.

Anna Maria jerks up, her chair scraping the floor. She lets her glass fall on the table. 

Leo startles. 

Anna Maria heaves and Primo smiles. 

Leo could throttle him right now.

Regina reappears in the doorway, without Francesco in her arms but with a weight behind her eyes that wasn't there before. Leo wonders how much longer he can fail her. 

"Anna" she calls out, voice tight "Come. Please." 

Anna Maria only looks down at Primo. Between her glass clashing against the table, and Regina stepping in again, it's almost as if Primo's disdainful words had broken something inside her. A sneer comes to her lips, exhausted, dire. She is shaking.

Leonardo looks between them. Primo just watches Anna Maria. His smile is hollow, just like his eyes had been. 

"Asshole" she snaps, final, pale and judgemental before striding out of the kitchen. 

Regina looks at Primo for a moment, before she follows, her lips in a thin line. She is disappointed, Leo can sense it. He is too, he won't lie. He had hoped better, somehow.

Primo doesn't seem disturbed by Anna Maria's reaction. 

He picks up his glass. 

"You're a piece of work, Primo." Leo tells him. It sounds bitter. Maybe because it is. He never expected that of him. Of Salvatore, Ludovico, it came with the name. Him, Leo is sad to admit, he thought he would know better than this. 

He thought he had taught him better. He thinks about Regina, and feels something crumble in his heart. 

Primo leans back. His hand holding an almost empty glass.

He only blinks back at Leo, eyes clear, face empty. 

As if he understood, more than Leo could ever imagine. 

"I remember" Primo tells Leo, unprompted. 

Leo looks up at him.

"The phone call." he adds. Leo blinks. 

"Why did you call?" 

He doesn't get a reply. Primo takes a sip. 

His finger drums on the glass.

Anna Maria still hasn't left the bathroom. She's been in there for the better part of an hour, with Regina too. They are talking in hushed whispers.

"Why did you call?" Leo asks in the night.

He doesn't think Primo heard him at first. He had been so still, for the better part of the last hour. But Leo should know better by now. It's Primo after all. Always on the look out. 

Maybe more so, now. As if there was something to be concerned about. As if he could be in danger, right now.

Leo's failure seems to grow, the more he looks at him, here, in his home.

"I promised." 

Leo stares at him. 

He holds his breath.

He feels his hands tighten into fists, gripping on his trousers to keep them from trembling. 

There are many things wrong right now, with Anna Maria, and Primo's behavior here tonight, but Leo focuses on one thing at a time. The phone call. The promise. One step at a time, and then he can build up from there.

"Is it alright now?" 

His voice echoes, in the silence. He sounds brittle, and exhausted. The knowledge that he hadn't been there, when there had been trouble, when Primo had called, it's acrid on his tongue, sour. It burns deep, and long. Almost as if, everything that had happened afterwards, and here tonight, had happened because he hadn't answered when Primo had needed him. One failure, and everything had started crumbling.

That was how strong his link with Primo had been apparently. He wants to curse and scream.

Primo nods, barely. 

It's not much, but Leo will take it. 

At least, it's enough to settle his racing heartbeat. 

"Avitabile thinks so."

The voice is bland. But Primo spoke. He is looking down at the glass again.

Leo's heartbeat picks up.

How could he have been so stupid. Of course, everything was related.

Anna Maria strides back in the kitchen after a while, she looks taller even in the dark of the night. Regina is behind her, looking fretful, tired. It's as if Regina had given the girl all her energy, all her strength, to keep on going, to keep on fighting. It's disheartening to see, how that is still needed.

Leo looks at Regina, still in a doze. He just wants them to go to bed. And sleep. Maybe, in the morning, they would be fine. It was maybe just a nightmare. It wasn't right. 

It wasn't fair, to fall on them like that.

Anna Maria stops next to Primo, who had been blinking half to sleep, reclined in his chair. 

"I need a gun" she tells him, plain. 

Leo straightens sharply at the words, so cold and factual. Primo only looks up at Anna Maria. 

"Good for you" he drawls. 

"Give me yours." 

Primo huffs a laugh. 

"Fuck you." 

"As if" Anna Maria snaps back instantly. She blinks, heaves, as if she only just understood what she had said to him. "I need it." 

Primo picks up his glass, looks down at the alcohol dirtying its bottom. 

"You wish."

Regina tenses, puts a hand on Anna Maria. She looks at Primo with betrayal in her eyes, and pain too. Leo doesn't know how he can help. He doesn't know how to handle Primo right then. It's as if Ludovico had sprung up from the dead, and possessed his son from over the grave. It's not Primo, sitting here with them. It's someone else. Who doesn't care. 

"I need it. Don't make me say it." Anna Maria whispers shakily.

"I don't care."

Leo's breath is cut when he hears Primo's voice. There it was. The truth behind all of that. Regina looks about to snarl, scream, he doesn't know how she's holding it all in. He can see the storm raging behind her lips.

"I -" Anna Maria tries again. 

"Don't bother." Primo tells her. "It's not as if you'll use it, is it?" 

Anna Maria looks on the verge of tears, as if he had just gutted her open. She is wavering in place. Leo has a hard time looking at Primo. It sounds distorted, wrong, those words, with his voice. 

But Primo sits there, and his gun stays at his belt.

"You're an asshole." she whispers.

Primo just looks at her. He keeps silent.

"Just like the others." Anna Maria snaps before rushing out. Leo isn't stupid, he knows what she is saying. It hurts to hear, but right now, it doesn't feel like she's far off the mark. It's Salvatore, it's Ludovico, it might even be a replica of Cesario, under his eyes, with Primo's face and Primo's voice, but nothing of his heart.

What happened, Primo? What turned you so cold? 

But, because nothing is ever easy with Primo, is it, Leo also catches how Primo's face closes instantly when Anna Maria speaks. 

As if it hurt him to hear her say it. 

It's disheartening.

Leonardo doesn't listen as Regina follows Anna Maria out, as she whispers to her that she can always come back. 

"What was that Primo?" He asks instead. Because whatever this conversation had been, it was cryptic, it was too clear, and Leo didn't want to tear his brain out pondering on it. If Primo had something to say, he would have to say it now, straight and no roundabouts. Leo might have failed him, but this, he will never stand for it. Not even with Primo. No matter how much he would do for the kid. 

He thinks about Regina, and Anna Maria, and what Primo had implied. 

He thinks about Regina.

Leo doesn't think he will want to see him for a while. 

Primo doesn't reply. 

His hand has finally left the glass. 

Leo can see it, lying close to the gun, by his side. 

He doesn't know what to make of that.

Even with Leo's glance warning her not to, Regina catches Primo before he leaves for Salvatore's.

She is tired but resolute. She will see this through. Leo stands back, watching. Just in case. Because he still doesn't know what to do with Primo then.

"Anna Maria -" she starts, voice faltering as Primo's eyes latch onto hers. 

"You can't tell anyone." she tells him, shoulders tensing.

Primo looks down at her, figure imposing and tall, eyes clear in the early morning's sun. 

"She called on you."

Leo wants to run away, turn around and never face the reality of his inaction.

Those words hold a truth that he could never live up to. He had failed him, he knew. They had failed him, and Primo had apparently made his peace with it. He had just witnessed them helping someone else. Someone who doesn't know them as he does, someone they don't know as well as they do him; someone who isn't for them what he is, or what he had been at least, before he ran away to Rome. 

Before that phone call. 

Leo would have fled, and maybe that's why he loves Regina as much as he does. He would have fled, because he can't face his mistakes, not everything it entails. It's difficult, because Primo had trusted him, and Leo hadn't been there for him. Regina though, she looks at it straight and doesn't back down. She doesn't know how far it goes, with Primo, but she knows Leo, and she always stands by his side where he goes. His mistakes are hers also. 

Leo can't breathe. She's stronger than him, on so many accounts. He doesn't know how he could live. How he could have survived anything, if it weren't for her, with him. There, for him.

Regina nods, tightly, under Primo's unknowable eyes. She agrees. He is right.

She grips the door tighter too. Leo knows, he can see it in her posture.

She's mad, Regina, he can see what she wants to do, how hard it is for her not to follow through. She wants to hug Primo close, because just like Leo, she can see it in him, the thrumming, the waiting, for something. Anything. To break through. To help him. But she knows him. She knows he is not like them, or Francesco, who will grow up loved and listened to, cared for. She knows how hard it is for him, to be held, to be comforted, physically.

As if he was better than this, as if he was more than his own body. 

She doesn't know everything Leo knows, but still. She's always seen more than most. 

"You can call too." she tells him. "We take care of our own, here." 

Leo's breath stops as he hears her words.

Primo's eyes harden, his jaw jumps. Leo feels his hand reach instinctively for his riffle, left next to where he stands.

He sees in Primo's place Salvatore, Ludovico, Cesario and - and he doesn't have to think for long. He knows what prevents those men from doing something, anything. It's to show them something worse than their own deeds. His hand touches the riffle, and it's hard to think about, but if Primo does so much as take a step toward Regina, there's nothing that will stop him from picking it up and using it. Even for a warning. 

He can't believe it has reached this point. With Primo, out of everyone around here. 

Primo, cold with fury and Regina watching him.

It shouldn't be that surprising, considering everything, but still.

Still. Leo had hoped better for him.

He had done his best, he thought. 

Maybe, it strikes his mind, it had never been enough. Maybe Rome had just brought everything back. Maybe you couldn't win, against blood ties. Even with all the best you had to give.

Leo feels the metal under his hand, biting cold, and wonders if Primo will lash out. If he will threaten Regina, like he does many others. But she stands there, one hand loose by her side and the other holding onto their door, holding their home open, in challenge. Almost as if deep down, she knew better than Leo. 

She knew better than them all. 

As if she understood something of Primo at that moment that Leo could never even try to reach for, that he could only guess at. Although he knows for a fact she doesn't know as much as he does.

"La famiglia va sempre protetta" she repeats.

He can't believe she still has so much to give, after everything.

When Primo turns around, she watches him. Leo does to.

His silence is deafening. 

They had been right, about the call, Leo confesses to her that morning, as they watch Francesco in his crib and hold onto each other tightly. They had been right. Primo had been in trouble. And he hadn't answered his call. 

Now there is a deal with Avitabile, in Rome. Who knows what it means for them all.

Regina wishes they had done more. She tells him so. That they had gone there, asked Fifty, anyone. That they had taken him back home, forced him to stay with them as soon as he reappeared...But wishing only gets you so far in their lives. And reality has its own ways of reminding you of that. 

They had done their best, at the time. It tasted wrong to Leo, but they had done their best. They had tried. They had taken care of their own, as best as it was possible. 

They would keep on taking care of their own. 

With Anna Maria. 

With Primo, if he will only let them close.

Regina dared to hope, maybe it wasn't all over yet. Maybe there was still something that could be saved. Leo hears only the promise he had wrenched from Primo's clenched teeth, a few years back. He hears himself speak, and he feels himself falling, every second, every moment, a bit more. He hadn't been there for him, when he had called for help. What was there left to salvage?

_You stay safe, you hear me? You can go and do whatever you want in the city, I don't have a say in any of this, I shouldn't have a say in any of this, but you stay safe.That's the only thing I'm asking. That you stay safe. That you come to me, if you're in trouble.  
_

_Promise, me. Primo._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading the chapter! I hope you're enjoying the story so far, and that it makes sense? It's been living so long in my head that I'm wondering if it's still coherent. 
> 
> I honestly cannot wait to drop the next chapter AND Primo's own side of it. 
> 
> Could you tell I've watched Gomorra and I couldn't find it in myself to come up with any other family name for the Dodgy Roman Family? I'm sorry.


	3. Miracolosa come la rugiada

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some people will say "Brevity is the soul of wit"
> 
> And I'll say "I'm dumb. Voilà."

It stays with her. On her mind, when she catches sight of Anna Maria walking around, when she hears Salvatore snicker just once. It stays with Regina and it haunts her. It haunts Leo too, because it's difficult to be honest with yourself, when it comes to something they thought they held in their hands.

They've failed, somehow, somewhere. Primo has tightened his world around himself, doesn't show himself, doesn't let out a single breath.

Primo's lost to them.

Dead.

His eyes are encased in his face, and he is holding himself as if he had something to fear from them, something to protect from within.

Regina had seen him, and she had seen a kid wilting under his father's fist. She had seen him, and she had seen a kid growing to be worse than what had raised him.

It was Rome, she was sure of it. Rome, and Ludovico has reclaimed him , and his violence has become overwhelming, curling under his skin , poisoning his veins and his soul . Regina wants to scream. After everything, this, this is what she receives?

_I don't care_

She wants to believe Primo was lying. She wants deeply to be certain that it was just a moment, it was just something he didn't think about. Something which that day made sense, but then he woke up and it wasn't the same matter altogether. He couldn't not care. Not after everything she had seen him go through, not after everything she had known him for too.

Not after everything he can supposedly do.

Primo cared , in his own way, strange and distant, but he cared . He felt. He would never hurt them.

He could never hurt them. And yet -

Why was she lying to herself?

It stays with her, that damned night. It stays with her because she can see in Primo's eyes something feral, begging to be let out. She sees in Leonardo's gestures the tension, the doubt. As if he had accepted that, maybe now, Primo could lash out at them.

At her.

No questions.

It haunted her. It haunted her, as she took care of Francesco and Leo would get a glint in his eyes, of shame, fear and hopelessness.As if he hadn't done enough, as if there was something else, beneath all that. Something he felt guilty about.He watched their son, and sometimes he would fall silent, hold onto him as if he wanted him to know deeply, physically, that he cared about him.

He would whisper to him that he would always be there for him.

As if he were trying to repent for failing Primo, Regina's heart broke.

He would whisper also, that he would always love Francesco.

As if it could ever be questioned. As if he could at some point just stop loving his son. For some reason.

Regina didn't know what to do, when she heard.Leo swore, he would always love their son. Just like he had sworn to Primo he would be there for him, before all of this.Regina felt lost.

She sees Leo, careful, tender, scared of doing the simplest gesture, and in her heart it' s as if Primo was leading their steps now, their words to their son . When she heard him whisper, she knew something had broken their little family up.

As if Leo knew something of Primo that Regina never could, and never would want to know. As if Primo had told him something, something so unsettling and disturbing, that he questioned his love for him. Questioned how far he would go, for his love of Francesco, his own son. For who he would grow to be, in this damned country.

Leo knew something of Primo, that he didn't want anyone to know.He knew something, and Regina never would.

Something worse than just "not caring".

Something Regina was scared of unveiling.

Even if she deeply wanted to.

It haunts Regina. She sees Primo, she hears him not caring, telling Anna Maria that she could never do it, deal with Cesario if she wanted, jeering. She sees Primo not caring, she feels him disdainful, and rightful, that night. Her heart beats loud, as she wonders, could he be one of them now? Could he be one of those bastards?

Regina knows better than to say "not him". She's been there, she's seen it. She knows better than this. 

It's a word, then it's a threat. A gesture that turns into a debt. A moment, a place. And it all goes downhill from there. 

Sometimes, you end up dead.

And yet. It's Primo. 

It hurts, because it's Primo. 

Because that idiot, she almost considered him her son. 

Almost. 

She won't let it go. 

"Ever seen a goat in front of a wolf, Primo?" Regina asks. 

She is working on some dough that time. They've been coped up at Salvatore's place for the day, Regina helping Salvatore's sister. The man himself had gone somewhere with Leonardo and a few others. 

Primo had arrived right as they had left. 

He had been told to wait there. He would have something to handle when they were done then. 

It had scared Regina, at first, to know Primo would prowl around. There was still this lingering tension, that bitter taste on her tongue. What if he was lost now?

It had scared her at first, and then she had squared her shoulders. She would be damned if him, of all the men around here, he would be the one to incite fear in her instincts. She wouldn't back away, not from Primo. She had raised him somehow, that stupid kid. She had raised him, as much as he had let her. 

She would show him, she would make him learn. 

He was still young. 

It had to work. 

And if it didn't, she was ready. She would cut him loose, she would bury him. 

Just like she did others before him. 

Leo would understand it. He would follow suit. Because he would follow her to the end of the earth if she asked him too.

She had squared her shoulders, and her fear had tingled, but then she had seen, how Primo had reacted to her demeanor, her posturing. She had watched him, fidgeting subtly, with the tip of his fingers, the bouncing of his leg, not glancing at her once, looking out. At all cost, avoid her. Regina had known then, what it was like, to inspire fear somehow in another. Because even if he was all too controlled, holding himself too tight, he still acted as if she was a threat. It steeled something in her, to know he still had some fearful respect for her. It also made her wonder, if she could uncover whatever he had consigned deep down inside. If he would tell her, if she were to ask. 

She could have smiled, as he looked outside. Because it was cold, and getting colder, because it was raining, and his car was a battered old thing, it couldn't keep in the heat, keep out the humidity. And he had to be ready, somewhat, for when the others would come back. Aware, warm and ready to go out. With a gun by his side.

Regina felt like she had won that round, somehow. He had to stay inside and face her, somehow.

And so Primo stayed. Coped up with her. The rain was falling faint then, but the darkness slowly drifted up in front of them and it was about to pour down. It would be bad. 

Now. She had to do it now. 

Regina wondered, as Primo sat behind her. He was tapping a pencil away on the table, reading the newspaper he had found lying about. 

Maybe, he wouldn't fight. 

Maybe, it would be alright.

Maybe, he would understand...

She swept flour on the table, feeling the used wood under her hand.

He had haunted her, since that last evening. His reaction, his words. Leo's retelling of their own conversation. It had scared her, because it wasn't the Primo she remembered. Maybe it was Rome, maybe it was being alone. But she couldn't let it go. 

She couldn't let him go down that road. 

She needed him to understand. She wanted him to see, why he shouldn't have acted like he did. Why he had been wrong, to say what he had and to talk to Anna Maria like that. To dismiss her, like that. Spit on her like he had.

_La famiglia va sempre protteta._

Regina would never lie, not about that. She had resented him a bit afterwards. Anna Maria hadn't shown herself again. She barely glanced at her when they came upon each other. Just because Primo had spoken up. Had acted up. Had mocked her.

At this point, Regina thinks she has nothing more to lose. He is already so far away from them all, what more could it do, to tell him what she thought of him, his actions. What more could it do, but dig deeper the distance.

He was already lost to her, turning brittle under her touch. As if he wouldn't let her come close again. 

She thought about a wolf bleeding and snapping, at someone coming near. She blinked. 

That wasn't it. She couldn't let herself see him like this. 

Not after that evening.

He wasn't a victim.

He wasn't some hurt animal here and now, sitting at her back and bored out of his mind. He was Primo, encased in some narrow-minded logic and expectations, back from Rome to roam their roads and dirty his hands before going back there to cleanse them up. And starting that round all over again. It was Primo. Salvatore's nephew, Ludovico's son. She wondered why she never saw it, that he would turn out just like they did. Why she had hoped for the contrary.

Maybe it had always been his fate.

Maybe she had been blind.

Regina breathed out. She felt her fingers dig in the cool dough, stretch it out.

Fate might exist, but she would be damned if she doesn't do everything to set him right, one last time. She won't have regrets, not about that.

Maybe he wasn't so much family anymore, maybe she was delusional, running on illusory hopes and a nostalgic sense of duty towards him, maybe she wouldn't protect him after this, maybe he would deserve it.

But for now, she could still try. 

He wouldn't be lost to her until she uncovered whatever he kept locked up. 

So she asks him. _Ever seen a goat in front of a wolf?_

It's the first things that comes up.

She doesn't expect an answer, but she feels him tense subtly behind her. It's a first. 

"They freeze." she tells him after a moment "Some of them even play dead." 

She is putting all her strength in the dough now, working it as she works her words out. Maybe it will help her focus. Maybe it will channel her frustration. Maybe, she's thinking about how to best explain to him, what had happened. How to best explain to him that there were things he would never know, he would never experience, and as such he couldn't judge others for their reactions. 

She works the dough and thinks. 

He had no right to sneer at Anna Maria, judge her and her actions, her words; he had no right, when he didn't know any better. 

Regina sees his eyes, empty, shining in the crude light.

He wasn't a victim.

Regina exhales. She keeps on talking. 

"Because a wolf won't go near something that's dead before it bleeds it. It's how the goats try to survive, when faced with a wolf. They don't fight back, unless it's too late. Because they know where they stand on the food chain. They know their strengths, and their weaknesses. They don't lie to themselves about it. The goats, Primo, aren't stupid. They understand very well the world they live in. And its dangers. Its tricks."

The clock ticks, in the silence her words leave.

"Is there a reason you're telling me this?" 

His voice drawls, but she still hears the tension in it. 

That young stupid kid. He thinks because he killed, because he threatened, because he deals with death and fear every now and then, he knows what this is. She can't hold it against him, to ignore it, to be blind about it. He's always been thrust to violence, made to act upon it. Ludovico and his mother, then the loneliness of his teenage years, Salvatore, and now Rome. And whatever he did, for that Avitabile, which inspired awe and quiet whenever his name came up. 

He has lived in violence, because he was born in it. 

But he doesn't know it like _they_ did. 

Regina's fingers break the dough and she curses. She can't let it get into her head, not now. 

He doesn't know the fear they have been through. The loyalty that runs through you, blind and ideal, and the shame that comes with it.

Anna Maria is still breathing. It's the greatest gift she could receive.   
Regina, her, she has killed her ow wolf. She won't die because of it. It's her own blessing. Even if she's far from over it. She knows she never will be, not entirely.

Primo might not see it, but there it all is. It lies, at their feet. 

A truth that no one will hear. 

It's not about the violence that is around you. It's not about the violence you grow to handle and live with, because it's always been there, because it will never leave. It's not that kind of violence. It's not the violence he knows, the one he has mastered.

It's about your trust, and who you put it into. It's about who you choose for yourself, when you're given that chance, and how that chance might turn rotten as soon as it blooms open. How you have been blinded by emotions, and how your instincts didn't work. 

How you froze. 

How you played dead to the world. Just in case it would come back at you.

It's about shame and owning up to your mistakes. Facing the world that is ready to spear you at any opportunity it gets. 

Because Primo might not know, he might not realize, but sometimes it's the one you've decided to trust with your life who throws it away, just like that. It's not about family then, about blood and parentage, it's about love and deception and pain. It's about trusting and being betrayed in the end. 

It's about a choice, willingly made, that you regret every step you take, that you drag around like a chain. It's about shame, and how you have to save face and go on as if nothing mattered, as if it hadn't happened. Because maybe it won't happen again, maybe _he_ will change, or maybe people will blame you for it. They will laugh, and jeer, they will mock you and tell you you've deserved it. Because really, who could believe it?

They'll watch you die, and do nothing about it. Because that's your own choice, right here. You decided. You did it. On your own.

You should have known better than this. If it came to this, surely, it's because you had a part in it. 

Regina won't hear about it. 

She's been through this once, she came out alive. She won't let anyone in her reach be mistreated like she had. She will do anything, to give them a way out, the tools to fight back. The understanding, that it's alright.

She looks at Anna Maria and tells her her door is open. When she needs it, if she wants to leave, she will be here. She will help her. She might not have many things, but still, it's better than nothing. And she tells her it's alright. Those things happen. It's not normal, it's not what you should settle for. Love shouldn't be painful, it shouldn't leave you half dead and scared, out of your depth, hanging down. But more than anything else, Regina says: you're not to blame. 

You can come out. 

You might be the victim, but you're not to be blamed for it. What you might have said, what you what have done at some point, it never excuses anything.

Primo needs to see it.

The tension rises, with her silence and the waves of tender rage she feels. She thinks about a bleeding wolf, growling. Primo is still waiting. Regina works the dough, she won't be turned from her objective. Sentimentality, it never goes well, with men like him. He is not to be pitied, not after that evening. He might have been a kid, he might have grown with violence. But this -

He is not the victim here.

He dug the grave, and gestured for Anna Maria to step in and wait. For the final blow to lend. She asked for his help and he started filling in the hole up again.

"We like to think we're predators, as human beings, Primo. The truth of it, really, is that we're all preys, first and foremost." Regina tell him, keeping her voice steady. "We do what it takes, to survive. Whatever happens to us, we do what it takes to survive. To make it through, no matter what. Sometimes we fight back." she grits her teeth, sweat gathering on her brow, because fighting back is the last resort, it's death coming close "Sometimes we flee, like Anna Maria briefly did." she breathes out "Sometime we freeze. There's nothing wrong with any of it. Surviving is key." 

She doesn't expect an answer, but the silence rings behind her. He has stopped tapping at the table with his pencil. 

He listens. She knows. 

She feels a weight as she speaks, as if she was pulling on a heavy lead. She wonders if it's his rising disdain, or her memories, which drags so much on her speech. 

"It's survival, Primo." she says "Anna Maria knows that. With Cesario, it's survival. You might have been right, saying she could never have used the gun against him. Maybe, but you can't know what she would have done with it. You can't say how she would have handled it. You can't see, how she is doing right now. You can't judge her for any of that. Because you don't know what it's like. To go as far as she did. To try. It's survival now, for her. Do you understand, Primo? Sometimes, we just have to do what it takes to survive. That's all it's about."

She expects a derisive laugh, she expects a snort. She expects to be ignored, for him to go back to his newspaper and brush her off, because those men they don't know what it means to be the weakest around here, in the society they live in. They always see themselves as the wolf, they don't understand. They see something pitiful, asking for help. They think honor, and shame.

They think prey.

They say she should die. Regina cannot deal with that.

"She asked for your gun, Primo. She didn't ask for _your_ help. You had no right to dismiss her like that. She could have had a choice. You didn't see that."

They are never the last one on the line, the most defenseless one.

He hadn't seen, how far Anna Maria had had to reach, to ask him for this. Because men like him, they just don't understand it.

They think they would never let themselves fall for something like this. It's a violence they will never meet.

Not when it comes to something so dire, so intimate. As having your trust broken by someone you believed would care. Someone you had chosen for yourself.

But Regina doesn't think it's for nothing that she is speaking, Primo is many things, but he is smart and she just wants to make him see, why he was wrong with Anna Maria. Why he shouldn't talk like he had.

She has stopped working the dough now. She is holding herself up above it, unblinking.

There's no reply. Her heart beats loud.

"Whatever happens to us, it's not on us, Primo. We're not responsible. Not when it comes to that. Not when it's about who you are. Your death. Your life. You had no right, to pass judgement like that. You don't know what she's going through. You don't know what it's like. To be betrayed like that. To have to face the world afterwards."

And still no reply. 

Regina feels her finger tighten on the edge of the counter. It angers her, that he wouldn't even acknowledge her.

She opens her mouth again, but suddenly he is striding out, the door slamming in his wake. It startles her, and she has to lean over the counter, for her knees not to buckle under her. 

The room feels hollow, siphoned of energy, as she's left alone. She hadn't realized how tense he had grown, how wired she had been herself. The fear, that had been there. 

She doesn't look, when his car rushes away. 

She doesn't know what to make of him, taking off like this. The wolf is still prowling, in the back of her mind. It howls, loud. 

It doesn't snarl back.

She closes her eyes. 

Primo has left. She gathers herself.

She doesn't know what to make of his departure,as sudden and striking as thunder rolling down the hills. 

She knows it takes some time, to face something like what she just laid out to him. To understand it, to allow it. She doesn't make sense of his anger, his tension, but she can only hope he will think on it. Regina sighs. Primo doesn't love Anna Maria, God but she can't even say if he loves her and Leo as they love him; but he is smart at least, that's her only certainty. He must remember, his own mother. He must know, deep down, what this is all about. 

Love, and trust, and bad luck. 

It's not on us.

She hopes she saw it right. 

(she doesn't know how her heart will manage, if he proves her wrong instead)

It's hours later and she's back home, when it comes to its zenith, before it falls at her feet.

"How can you believe it?" 

Regina startles. She hadn't seen Primo on the steps of the house when he had spoken. Dusk was falling, she had been about to take Francesco on a stroll out. The rain has gone now, and the street is quiet, everyone is inside. There is a cold draft of wind, persistent in the sky. 

His car is parked, unobtrusive.

She turns around. He is standing against the railing of the stairs, looking straight ahead in the dark.

"Primo?" she calls out, closing her door and shushing Francesco in his pram. "What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be with Salvatore this evening?" 

When she looks back up, she sees the tension coursing through his limbs. She knows, suddenly.

She had been wrong about him. 

"How can you believe it?" he repeats. 

She blinks. "Primo" she chides him, as Francesco starts babbling at nothing. She takes a few steps down, leaving the pram up the stairs. Primo still won't look at her. 

She takes her time, looking at him. She thinks she sees a strain by his eyes, a pinch by his mouth. A frown on his face, which didn't use to be there. Are these the consequences of her words? Or just Rome, dodging his steps?

In the light, even dying as it is now, he cannot hide. Or maybe, she just knows him too well. He is reacting, reeling still. As if it had touched something in him. As if it had hurt _him_.

She wants to huff out a laugh. 

Primo's jaw tightens in reply. 

"How can you believe any of the shit you told me?" he repeats, mechanical in his speech. He is almost whispering, spitting."Talking as if you have no responsibility." 

His eyes are hard, cold and far, when he finally looks at her. She doesn't flinch. She's heard that speech before. How the victim had had a part in her demise. She watches him, bitterness turning in her guts, reaching for her lungs. She can feel it, she's about to growl fire. Because she watches him and she remembers, a few years back, when he would fight Leo, when he wanted to leave for Rome. He had been proud. Rightful. He didn't listen then. She has the feeling he won't listen now. As if it's useless, to even talk with him there. Try and make him see.

He is still fighting. Her words, her meaning.

Her lips thin. She steps in front of him, looking down upon him.

"How can you believe" he asks in a breath, as if it burned him, as if it was too much for him to bear by himself. He was a kid, in those moments, under her eyes. Just a kid, learning the harsher truths of life. Having a tantrum, because it's not what he had wanted to be shown. "That it's all just survival? That you're not responsible?" 

She looks at him, shoulders hunched and face tense. She wonders if he has ever spoken as much and as crudely as he did here, with her, at least. He's always been silent, observing. Speaking, talking, it has never been his thing. 

She wonders if it's what he is like, when he is confessing his sins. If he spits everything out, let's you deal with the mess afterwards

Her heart turns cold, or maybe it has just finished carving itself, over the hole Primo would leave once they were done here. It doesn't pain her as much as it could have. She looks at him. There is a draft of wind. And she sees it, suddenly. Primo looks frail, strangely enough, for all the tension he carries and the rage in his speech. He looks young too, for all that she calls him a kid, and that's a look she can't remember seeing on him even the first time he had stepped through her door and she had let him sleep here.

He looks like he is fraying at the seams. 

Regina breathes. She never really thought she would reach so deeply inside him. It's a responsibility she doesn't really feel like taking. Not with what she had seen of him recently.

But she asked after it, this time. She told him about it. She will tackle it.

She will make him see. 

She won't let him blame the victim.

"Do you think we should be responsible for something we fall prey to?" 

She wants to sound calm, composed. But he makes her heart beat loudly. The look in his eyes is disturbing. She doesn't know what it means.

She remembers Anna Maria's eyes, the first time she had come to her in the night. The distance, the hollowness. 

She remembers her own gaze, in a mirror, some times away.

It's almost the same, with him there. Maybe it's the sun, fading, hiding. Maybe it's just her, and her wishful thinking.

She needs him to see, what the reality is.

"There is a good reason you fell for it in the first place."

He says it casually. Too casually. He almost shrugs as he speaks, in complete opposite to how he had been holding himself since the beginning. As if it were something he knew by heart, something he had reharsed. As if it were expected, for her to say this. For him to turn it back out just as she said it.

Regina suddenly feels a snarl coming on her lips. 

It's tender, those memories. She sees Anna Maria in her mind, a shell, waiting for the explosion to pass, and she can't take it. She sees a bleeding wolf, but it's nothing. She snaps her hand out, and tugs Primo away from the house, away from Francesco and his pram, away from Leo and their little home, and she strides to a couple of trees back down. 

Away from her current life, away from anyone who might be on the look out. 

Nearer to a grave, than an open door. 

She doesn't want to know which way this conversation will go. 

Primo lets her. She wonders briefly if he won't fight her. If she won't find her end, that night. With him. About this, out of anything. 

That's how much he scares her, actually. 

She should never have lied about it. 

"So what?" she snaps under her breath, pushing him against the bark of a tree "you're saying Anna Maria asked for it, is that it?". She needs him to understand. How much of a narrow-minded idiot he can be, really. She had thought he had been taught better. Ludovico, Sandra...everything. She thought he knew better. That's what had transpired at least. 

That's what she had tried to give him.

He, out of everyone, should understand. You never ask for it, when it happens. With his father, he should understand.

He blinks, breathes shakily, but the composure comes back up quickly. As if he hadn't expected her to speak about this.

"No one forces her to stay. Nothing's holding her back." 

His voice is toneless. There are no emotions in his eyes. 

The rage burns all the harder in Regina.

"Madre mia, Primo, but do you hear yourself?" she cries out, before remembering herself."What is she supposed to do? Leave? Where? With what? She's a housewife, Primo, think about that. She has nothing to her name." Regina feels her throat close up, as if she hadn't already drained those possibilities up. "She only has Cesario now. Don't you think she has thought it out? Do you think she stays with him because it's fine? She has a good reason to stay. Because with him, she has a roof over her head. Food on her plate. The price to pay is Cesario staying around her. She didn't ask for it." Regina breathes out "But better the evil you know than the one you don't. Trust me."

Primo's face is closed. Regina wonders if he's finally dealing with the anger he had, for his mother. If he's finally facing the truth of his parents. Or Rome. Or whatever.

"She can't be that desperate, if she stays there."

It cracks Regina open.

"Should she die, for you to see the depth she's in? What could she show, that would make you believe her? What is it you need to see? Scars? Blood? Cesario's hands on a gun or a knife, and her body lying on the ground? Is that what you want Primo? Tell me." 

"She should have thought about it first." he gives her "No one forced her to go with Cesario." 

Regina stares. 

He sounds hollow, she doesn't know. 

"Primo" she warns him "listen to yourself. I beg you, listen to yourself. You saw what they looked like, before they got married. They were the sweetest couple around here. You were there, you've seen it. Should she have thought beforehand that she might die because of her future husband? Who does that? You shouldn't live your life thinking about all the worst, not when it's about trust and love. That's not how it should work!" She knows she's getting emotional. She can't help it if when she sees Anna Maria she sees herself, her past, a deviation she could have made, at some point in her life. 

She sees the devil she had side-stepped. The hell she had escaped.

Primo turns to steel under her arm. He's cold. She feels his arm under her grip, the bone, thin. He won't give in. She wants to damn him. Him and this whole society.

"She should have thought about it."

His face is set, but Regina cuts him.

"You're saying whatever happens to us, we have a part in it, Primo. You're saying-" 

"I'm saying everyone makes their own bed, and they lie in it in the end." he snaps back, eyes alight.

Regina slaps him. 

It's rare that she would react like this. She can't remember the last time she slapped someone, out of anger. If she's ever done that, even. She had slapped Leo, out of fear, when he had brought Primo home bleeding. She might have also slapped him when he had told her he would like to marry her, because it still seemed impossible to her, but she had never reacted like this, out of anger.

Everyone makes their own bed. 

They lie in it.

You deserve it, he is telling her. You deserved, whatever happened.

But God, it's a knife to the guts such words from Primo, of all people. She thought he would know better. She doesn't know how she could have been so blind. She wonders how deep Salvatore's claw went within him. Ludovico's. She wonders if any of Leo's care, and hers, had done anything other than polish the scars and the chains of those lessons.

"How can you say that?" her voice sounds hollow too now, in the night. She hates, that he brought her to that. "How can you-"

"How can you cry about being a victim and not do anything about it?" Primo growls back. He takes a step, and another, crowding her. She holds him at arm's length, tense, frozen. Would he lash out at her? He doesn't seem to realize, as he overwhelms her. There's just blind rage in his eyes. His shoulders are hunched, and his arm is trembling. He doesn't shake off her grip. She wants to think it means something, to him. 

She tightens her hand around him. 

_It's me_ she's whispering. _It's me Primo. Please._

She knows how stupid it is. Because nothing prevents him from doing anything. 

Nothing now, prevents her from dying. 

She blinks.

"That's not survival." Primo exhales, voice spitting out, lost, on a roll, "Freezing, fleeing, hiding, taking it without a word, that's cowardice. Your problem is still out there, roaming around. You let it happen." he heaves "You let it happen. It's just cowardice, all of your bullshit. You let it happen." he sounds ragged, as he inhales, and his eyes don't seem to see her anymore, they are lost. 

Regina suddenly wants to tell him it's fine, he's alright.

She cuts that feeling down. He won't have her like that.

Primo speaks up again. This time, his tone is dead.

"It's on you whatever goes on after. Whatever happens to you. It's on you." 

Regina feels her heart give in. She sees him fighting his own soul, she hears the screams he won't let out, the pain he keeps inside. She blinks, and there is that bleeding wolf again, snapping as it dies, blood seeping out.

She wonders about that, until she doesn't. It's all too clear, it's now, here or nothing. 

She grips at the lapel of his jacket, uncaring for all the warnings he had shown her in his stance. She grips at his jacket and forces him forward. She wants to see his eyes properly, in the fading sunlight. She grips and tugs, once, harsh. He hunches over, she can feel his knees give in slightly in reply. As if he were ready to kneel, if she did anything about it. If she were to ask him. 

She doesn't know what to make of it.   
  
But she won't do it. She needs him there, standing, to see his eyes, to be his equal. For that. She doesn't want him brought down, she doesn't want to have the upper hand, not like that. She will make him understand, but he won't be brought to be pitied under her hand. 

She exhales, just once. She has to force herself to ask. She is scared, of what she will find.

"What happened, Primo?" she breathes out "What happened to you?" 

Her words ring in the silence of the hills. For a moment she wonders if he's heard her, but after a second he jerks back, getting away from her. She still has a grip onto his collar.

"Shut up. Noth-"

She tugs at his jacket once. He stumbles again, and falls silent. 

"Primo." Regina's eyes are burning up."A few years ago you would have taken one look at Anna Maria and forgotten your gun on our table. She's one of ours, Primo, she's family, and we protect our own. You know that. And I know you, Primo. I know you" she shakes him with all her strength. "Don't you dare act like whatever this is, is normal. Not from you, Primo. You're not a saint, I'm not blind. But this - This isn't you." she snarls, unable to contain the tension around them. "So I'm asking you, what happened? To you?"

His jaw is locked. His eyes piercing. He won't speak. 

But she won't let it go. She will pry it open, gouge his heart out if she has to.

He will tell her. Because there is too much to be uncovered.

"Primo. I haven't kept you alive so long to hear you speak like that. Primo." she snaps. "Tell me. Everything."

She sees him struggling, feels the energy rolling around in him, his shoulders trembling. He is breaking up a bit, still fighting. She needs to know, what it all means. What he did. 

"Primo" her voice is decisive, leaves no room to argue. "Tell me. Now."

She doesn't know what to do more. What to say more, than to ask.

"For better or worse, Primo, we're family." she whispers, finally, even if it hurts her heart to admit it. "I swear Primo. I swear upon it. So tell me."

He heaves. As if it had shocked him awake.

He blinks. 

"I learned." 

Regina grits her teeth. He sounds empty, as if it had taken everything for him to say this. 

Her eyes trace the impassiveness on his face, and the coiling in his muscles. The same closed features that when she had caught him on his way out of Salvatore's house, a few weeks before. But broken up now, as if something had seeped through and was burning him, from the inside out. As if his control was melting away, and he didn't know how to keep it in anymore. 

She's done playing nice. She will have everything out. Now.

"Primo,you will listen. I will tell you what happened." she says suddenly. Because she might not know everything, but her instincts guide her, just so she can unravel it. If she only takes the right line of thinking. And this, this has been kept too long in waiting.

The looks he sends her way, fear and relief fighting each other in his pupils, gives her the strength she needs to keep going. He doesn't say anything. She takes that as her right to keep on digging.

"It happened weeks ago. Listen to me" he takes a step back in surprise at her words and she latches onto his arm this time, tugs him back to her. "You called, Primo. It was three in the morning, you could barely speak. You called, to say you were fine. No explanations, not a word for a week afterward." 

She feels remorse, and sadness, to have been unable to help then. 

She hopes she isn't too late yet.

Maybe, something can still be salvaged.

"And now you speak like that."she tells him "Do you have any idea how worried I was? How worried we were? The least you can do is tell me what happened. Why. You promised." she reminds him, at last.

Primo exhales, his eyes look crazed, almost as if he was about to attack her, fight her. Regina dares to believe in him, to think he knows better. To believe he can trust her. She would deal with the fallout after.

"I never promised that." he whispers."Not to you."

Regina takes it in strides. It's better than nothing. She will manage it.

"Leo and me, Primo. We're one and the same when it comes to you. We're here for you." she tells him. She doesn't promise the future, she doesn't say they will be there later for him, in case it is as dire as it seems. But she says it, because it's never said enough. He needs to hear it. And she isn't above using dirty means. 

"Tell me, Primo. Do it for yourself." Regina squeezes his forearm "I love you, Primo..." it's a confession she lets out, maybe for the last time. Maybe to be buried after that. But still, for now, there is still something. She still loves him. 

And then she will see.

This, it seems to shake him to his core.   
  
"I grew up." he heaves, snapping, his eyes are lost, he doesn't see her anymore. She can't see his face properly, as darkness comes around them quickly. But it seems to be a relief, as he fires it out. It's a relief for him. To speak up. To tell someone. Her. She hopes she won't regret, hearing him out. 

"I was stupid. That's it." 

It sounds as if he resented her, for it. She doesn't know where she stands with him. It makes her angry.

"Primo, just tell me, for God sake. Nothing you could do would-"

He takes her wrists and she feels her heart miss a beat as he stares at her up close, pupils blown and jaw locked. She might have gone too far, be too focused on herself, not enough on the look out. 

"I killed a man." he tells her, looking right at her "I killed a man. And burned his place down. And killed his men too. Six of them. Is that what you want to hear?" he whispers to her suddenly. "I've killed all those people. On my own. Because I was stupid. Is that nothing to you? Really? That's the call you're speaking of. That's what happened." 

Regina's breath catches in her throat. It's a lot to take in, she'll admit. Six men. Killed. By him. Six.

Six men. 

A burned home. 

A body, unknown. 

Rome. 

The call. 

Regina feels like she's dug up a grave and she's standing on the edge. 

The palazzo. The gruesome deaths. 

That was him, in the end. 

She breathes deeply. He is watching her closely. That's not what she expected, but she will take it. She doesn't know where it leads them, this admission. Where Anna Maria fits in all of this, and all their previous discussion about being a victim, and whose responsibility it is. She thinks about a wolf, and its preys. She wonders where Primo stands, what's his place, in that chain. 

She thinks again, to the wolf, bleeding and in pain. She sees him standing there. 

She squares her shoulders, straightens up. She won't be led astray, by what he is claiming. He could have killed the whole world, she still wouldn't hear it. It's not what she is looking for, and he knows it. He is just giving her something else to think on. She thinks about Anna Maria. She thinks about responsibility. But she caught him talking about that one man. That one man alone. Who had started it all. The one he had killed, before everything else followed.

She isn't above using dirty means. And manipulation is something she had learned about early. 

"Why did you kill him?" 

The question startles him. He bristles, under her grip. She wonders, if there was a girl in the middle of everything. A girl like Anna Maria, someone Primo had tried to help out. Someone he could have loved, that left him behind. She wonders, what could have happened afterwards, to make him as bitter as he is now. If she had betrayed him. 

If he had ended up killing her too, because he couldn't stand it.

Or if she had tried to escape him. Like Anna Maria wanted to escape Cesario.

She sees his teeth showing. Her own lips purse, it's instinctive. 

"I was stu-" 

"You're anything but, Primo. Don't think I am either." 

His eyes are wide, as she snaps at him. She looks at him straight on. It's now or never, she knows. If he doesn't tell her, he will die with this and they will never hear of it again. It will kill him slowly, like it kills them every time they see him.

She feels his heartbeat, furious and mad against her grip.

"Tell me, Primo."

He shakes his head.

"Tell me." she growls. "Now. Just tell me and be done with it!"

Her voice is high in their surrounding. 

Primo shivers once, at her voice. 

"I" he starts, as if doubt lingered on his mind. Doubt on his words, on what he could tell her surely. Or about what had truly happened maybe. "I thought I could trust him" he gives her, finally.

That's not what she had been expecting. No girl, just "him". Him, that man, who hadn't deserved his trust.

Men will go far, Regina thinks bitterly, for a matter of misplaced ego of all thing. She wants to sneer. 

But she can see him struggling with words, thinking, about what he can tell her and what he can't, in the silence. It breaks her heart somehow, deep down, to know he would rather keep parts of his life from her. That he would rather torture himself with those memories than share them with her. As if he couldn't trust her. Not completely, not with everything. As if he was ashamed. As if she would judge him. 

Her grip turns to steel on his wrist. She still doesn't see, where Anna Maria fits in any of this. 

"I - couldn't. That's it." he finally admits.

_What have you done, Primo, that you would confess a murder but not what brought it up?_

Regina takes a step closer, thinks about another path to reach for the truth he has buried deep down. Her other hand comes up to rub at his elbow. She watches him, closely.

"What did you trust him with?" she whispers. Because she sees Anna Maria's face in her mind, and the coldness that Primo had exulted when they had met the last time. There's something more, in there. Something she's not sure she wants him to share. But she will help him get there. Just to know, where she can stand. 

But it's the wrong question to ask. She sees his face fall blank and the light in his eyes fade back. He is suddenly empty, emotionless, under her hands. It's the look he had, when Ludovico was still around. An old one, as if he left his own body. She knew it as an act of survival, when he had nowhere else to go. She had seen it before.

She squeezes his elbow, feels her lungs shutter in. She won't lose him now, after everything. 

"Why did you trust him?" she asks quickly, hoping there's still something to be salvaged. Hoping he can still hear her. "Tell me, Primo."

She waits, under the fading sunlight. She waits, rubbing her hands on his elbow, his shoulder, telling him she's there, without words. 

"Why, Primo?"

He shakes his head, minutely. 

It's better than nothing, she wants to believe. She swallows heavily.

"You had a good reason to trust him," she prods "you had to, Primo. So why did you? I'm listening to -" 

"I don't know-" he croaks out with a frown, and it seems painful to say it out loud. "He just- he looked -" he suddenly heaves, paling, as if the words burned him "I just- I thought I could trust him." 

Regina wants to tear up. She needs to know more, to understand how far that trust went. What would lead him to such violence. What broke him up so well. And Anna Maria still haunted their conversation, a ghost at their back. What did it mean, to them?

Regina squares her jaw. She will find out.

"Like you trust Leonardo?" It's a shot in the dark, calling up such loyalties like that. But it's the only reference she has, to understand what Primo went through. What happened. She isn't above using Leo's name to get her answers. She knows they are close, that they share more than most. It's the best she can guess for Primo. It would be the worst, if that trust had been used against him. If it had been used to hurt him. It didn't excuse everything, but still. It was a first step, to understand him. 

And decide, what she would do afterwards. 

There's a beat of silence. The wind ruffles the leaves of the trees around them. She doesn't see Primo's rib cage moving anymore.

"No" he says, softly. Aloof.

She opens her mouth, want to snap out one last time, but she stutters to silence just as quickly. She can see his lips moving.

"Like you trust him.With everything."

It breaks something, that confession he lets slip past him. 

It's a whisper, almost nothing. Regina almost didn't catch it. But she blinks, because she heard it. She heard the words, she caught their meanings. She feels her lips part. 

She doesn't say anything. 

There's nothing for a moment. In the silence, the night grows around them, swallows those words. As if they were never there. As if she hadn't heard them.

But it resonates, in the wilderness around them. 

_I trusted him. Like you trust Leonardo._

_With everything._

That's what he had said. 

With my whole soul, she thinks. Because she would give everything to Leonardo, her whole body, her whole-

Regina wants to run away and never turn around. What is this? What is this about? 

"Don't touch me" Primo snarls suddenly, but she holds onto him still, because this is somehow worse than anything she could imagine. She had been ready. Anna Maria behind them, and him before her. She had made up her mind, to see him leave, to try and not care anymore about him, if he truly ended up as bad as it had seemed."Don't-"

She had never counted on him, falling away like this, and calling out for help like this. About this. She had never thought it would come to this, with his understanding of the world and his way of doing things. She never saw it, him of all people, but suddenly she sees it clear -

"Primo!" She snaps, unable to get herself under control "What do you -"

"Like you trust him, I said. With everything." he chokes out, furiously, his eyes wide. "Like Anna Maria trusted Cesario. Now tell me I deserved it." he spits out "Because I did. I asked for it. Do you understand what I am saying? I deserved it. I looked for it and I deserved it."

Regina doesn't understand, but she does, more than she would want to. She wants to cry. She almost does. But not for the reasons he seems to think.

She looks at him, that kid she had raised a bit, she had followed from afar, she had lost nights of sleep thinking about. That kid, with his strange ways and his clear gaze that cut through you and left you bare. That's what he knew then. That's what he kept for himself. 

A truth like nothing else.

She understood all too well.

She sees his lips turn up into a snarl, and she wants to hug him and tell him everything will be alright now. Because he went that far, to look for something he couldn't have, and he came back, hurt, bleeding, but alive. He was still here. When so many couldn't make it, so many never will. He was still there, and she was listening to him. He was still there. He too, had survived that hell.

She blinks away her tears. Fumbles with her words, it's so unexpected. "I can't believe-"

He catches her own wrists. "See, I knew it." he seethes, holding onto her hands, not pushing her away but keeping her crushed under his fingers "I knew it. You don't mean a word of what you're saying. You don't even believe me do you? You think it's another one of my tricks, don't you?" 

Regina chokes. 

"You stupid little shit" she hurls back suddenly "You - what were you expecting? You tell me now! Like this! Here! I thought -" She inhales sharply, she shakes his grip frantically and gets her hands onto him. His jacket, she tugs, he comes close again, tense and silent. She feels her eyes tear up. She heaves, as if he had gutted her open.

"I thought I had lost you, Primo. I thought you were gone. I thought -"

"You never thought it would be possible, did you?" he sneers with a derisive laugh, and she slaps at his arm and she holds onto him because damn it. This kid. She doesn't know how far it went, how much he lost on his way there, but it doesn't matter. It's all the same to her. She won't let him get away from her. 

"This, what you've been through" she growls through clenched teeth "no one ever sees it coming, do you hear me Primo? It's never possible, until it happens. And then it's too late, and then you have to make do. You have to survive. If you think I'll judge you for that, think again smart ass. And if it's a trick, too bad. I don't care. I'm not letting you out of my sight, not after that."

"What if I were lying? What makes you think I'm not?" Primo starts, eyes wide, a smile plastered on his lips, with vicious curiosity. He had always been on the look out, for the worst possibility.

Regina looks straight at him. Her heart has slowed, that's something she knows.

"Because no one lies about this Primo." she tells him, voice low. "There's no pride to be had here, there's only shame when you speak out. Shame, and uncoiled guilt, digging through every move and every word that led you to where you ended. No matter what you claim to have done, what you think you resolved. There's no lie, Primo. There can only be silence. It's only when it hurts too much that it gets out. And then, there can't be any lies. Not about that."

It leaves him silent. He looks fragile, all of a sudden, at her admission. She knows her tone, she knows her words. It's something she has faced once. She wouldn't wish it on anyone.

"You didn't deserve it, Primo. Whatever happened, what happened to you, it's not your fault." she tells him, tries to calm him.

Primo laughs, as if disturbed by her answer. He has never been colder under her hands. 

"It's not my fault. How many people do I need to kill to make it mine then?" 

She slaps him, dry and quick. He stops moving. 

"Don't think I'm stupid, Primo" she tells him. "Do not try this with me, out of everyone, out of everything."

She takes a breath, her hand still on his cheek. He hasn't closed his eyes. He is looking at her, as if she could help him up or break him down. She doesn't like having that power, not over him, not when she cares so much about him. As if she could have ever buried him really.

"Primo, I need you to listen" she centers herself, taking his face in her hands "you are only responsible for your own actions. But no matter what the others do, it has nothing to do with you. And even if you freeze, even if you flee, even if you kill goddammit, as long as you come out alive, it doesn't matter, do you hear me? You are responsible for what you do, what you do alone. But your survival should always come first and foremost. What happens outside of your control, it doesn't matter. It's not on you. It's never on you. Tell me you understand this."

"You -" he snarls at her. 

She laughs. "Primo, don't. I see you, Primo. I know you, better than you think. And I stick by what I told you. You do not deserve whatever happened to you. Look at me, believe me when I say this: you survived. There's nothing more I could ask."

"You don't understand" he repeats, sounding lost "you don't understand-"

Regina closes her eyes. She won't handle it if he goes on like that.

"I do, Primo." she tells him. "You tried, you thought you could go that far, you thought you could trust someone and you were proven wrong. It happens. It's alright. You're alive." she recites the words Leo had whispered to her, the ones she goes back to, when it gets too difficult, too painful. "Please, don't hide from me, from Leo, not about this. Your mistakes are yours to bear. But what I can help with, I will. Because I know how difficult it is." she shakes him. "Everything. Trust, and men. I know how difficult it is." she looks at him then, unblinking. She wants him to see, how far she has been herself. How alike their experiences might be in that regard, even if he won't tell her everything. "There wasn't always Leo for me, Primo. It's never easy, to find the right person to be with, like you tried to. It's all about trials and errors. Some are harder than others to let go of. But it's our survival that counts."

"Is that what you told Anna Maria? That it was a try? Even when she wanted to have blood on her hands?" Primo sneers. She feels her finger tighten around his face. 

He really aimed low, where it hurt the most. He wanted her to lash out, to mock him. He should know better.

"Yes, that's what I told her. That's what I tell anyone willing to listen. Who needs to listen." She tells him, imperious. She forces him forward, tugging on him, to be on the same level as him. She needs him to look into her eyes when she says this to him. "It's what I tell myself too, when it gets difficult and I remember." she confesses and she knows Primo is listening. It's hard to be recalling those memories, but they are always here. She smiles weakly at him. "It never goes away. It's always there. But it fades."

"Not six deaths." 

"It's not about the numbers of people you've killed, Primo. It's about what lead you to kill them. You protected yourself. You survived. You're still alive. I don't care how many bodies need to be buried for that. I'll help you out, if it comes to that. That's what we do for our family. That's how we're here, you and me. Because someone was there for us when we needed it."

There's a strange glint in his eyes as he exhales raggedly. She knows she got through to him, finally. 

"How many did you kill?" he asks her.

Regina shakes her head.

"How many did Leo help you bury?" 

Regina slaps him softly. "Stop it." she huffs. "Stop it. And that's on me to know, and him, not on you."

"I told you" he tells her, eyes doubtful. As if it mattered, the leverage. He had given her something, she needed to give him something too. She wanted to shake her head.

"But you're mine to look after." she kisses his forehead, feeling lighter all of a sudden.

He closes his eyes, and her breath comes a bit easier. 

"You did kill at least one" he declares in the night, and she huffs a laugh, slaps at his arm. She takes his elbow again, and tugs him back toward the house. She can hear Francesco babbling away to the fireflies which have started flying around his pram. 

When she doesn't let go of his arm as they near his car, she can feel him tense. 

"It's getting late. And there's still dinner to be made." 

"I'm-" he tells her, slowing his steps. 

"You're staying. I might trust Leo with many things, but not with cooking pasta unfortunately. I need you to watch over him. Francesco will be going to sleep."

Primo frowns, but he puts his keys back in his jacket. 

"And you think I know better?" 

Regina just sends him an unimpressed glance. He had watched her make them enough time, as a kid. She didn't need to remind him.

"Is Anna Maria coming?" he asks her as she opens the door, and pushes Francesco's pram in. 

She blinks, startled by the question. 

"I don't think so" she admits. 

Her house's lights are on. But there's no telling, later on.

"Sometimes, it takes a while, to come to terms with where we are in our life. I don't need to remind you of that." she says. It takes a while, before you realize exactly what you need, and how to call out again. To lick your wounds, find the strength to come back.

Primo doesn't say anything. His eyes are locked on the windows a few houses down from their own. 

Regina doesn't comment, when she comes from Francesco's bedroom and she sees Leo putting the plates on the table, talking away, moving more easily, words flowing more freely, as if he had sensed the shift in the atmosphere. Primo is leaning against the gas, water boiling at his back. 

The pasta are perfect. She smiles. Primo doesn't look fazed as he eats and listens, when Leo tells them about another one of Romeo's accident. She wants to believe he looks like his usual self, more relaxed, more at ease than he had been the previous weeks. He listens, and he still drinks, but he doesn't hold onto the tension running through his body. He's looser, in his manners, in his gestures. His eyes too, have lost that composure. 

She wants to believe maybe it's alright now, a bit better at least. Leo catches her eyes, he smiles. 

She wants to believe she did it. She took care of him, as much as he was willing to let her at least. It's difficult to gauge, and decide, but it's a step. It will have to be enough. 

Primo leaves. 

Anna Maria never comes.

Regina tries, but sleeping evades her for the night. Anxiety is coursing through her veins and even now, she wonders. Has she done everything in her power? To take care of them? To protect them?

Has she done right, by them?

She tells Leo, in the night. What Primo had told her. 

She isn't careful, because she knows better. 

First, she believes it is important for him to know about this. Everything. To be able to help, if anything comes up, any murmur, any snicker. Because these will come, at one point or another, and she wants to be sure, Leo won't muddle and mess it up. 

Second, she believes in her husband, and even if it's uncommon, even if it seems strange to them, she believes he can get over it. He will. It's Primo, after all they're talking about here. His safety. There is too much at stack for it to be problematic. So she says it clear, without mincing her words. 

Primo had found someone, had loved someone. The man had betrayed him. That's why he had called, that night. That's why he was hurt, and he was still raw on the inside.

He had killed that man, his lover. She stresses it, to see how Leo would deal with it.

She hears him fumbling with his brush. 

When she looks at him, she sees relief in the drop of his shoulders. She huffs. 

So that's what he knew, that he wouldn't tell her. 

"I felt I needed to keep it to myself." he admits, lying down next to her. 

"You did right." she kisses his hand, over hers. "It's something he needed to tell me. I'm glad he did. Because now at least, we know what happened back in Rome."

Leo looks at her in silence. She looks back, disbelief clear in the lines of her brow. 

"Really?" she asks him "You really thought I wouldn't accept it, from him? After everything I've been through? Everything we did?" 

Leo smiles. "No, never" he tells her. "I just - You're wonderful. It's a blessing, for me to share my life with you." 

He frowns. "Do you think he will be alright?" _Do you think it can be as simple as that?_

She closes her eyes. "I don't think he will, for a while. After that, it depends on him. We can only be there, if he asks us for it..."

Regina doesn't comment, a few days later, when she hears that Cesario is looking around for Anna Maria. That his wife is nowhere to be found. 

She feels dread, the first time she hears about it. Then it's rage storming in. Leonardo sees it. He kisses her on the cheek, gives her Francesco to lull to sleep. 

Takes from her the knife she had been using.

The audacity, she thinks, as Francesco babbles something. To make it look like he cares for his wife. As if he had cared about her safety, when she had been at his mercy. As if he cared at all. As if it was something he could handle, a wife, someone else's life. 

He should be dead, lying at the bottom of a lake.

Cesario's search is quickly lost in the wake of another. 

Primo is gone too, Leo tells her. 

Her fingers around Francesco's tighten. 

Her son fusses happily. 

Salvatore is enraged, Leo whispers with a soft smile. Primo just up and left. They don't know where. Or why.

Leo doesn't seem too anxious about it, as he looks down at Francesco and hums a lullaby to him. Regina wonders if it's pride she sees shining from him. It's warm, at least. It touches her, and she lets it grow on her. That's what she feels too, because there is something there. A coincidence that is too nice to let pass by.

She wisely doesn't say anything when Salvatore comes in and complains and seethes. She smiles to herself, and her son. 

Maybe hope wasn't lost. Maybe, beneath all the despair and the harshness of life, something could still be done, one step at a time. 

"We take care of our own" She tells Francesco, in her arms. Or at least, we try.

We take care of our own.

Whoever they are. 

Because we will always love them, that's why.

( It's a letter, that finally tells her, a few weeks later. Nothing much, just a couple of words, scribbled with a botched pen. 

_Grazie per tutto._  
_E per la passagia._  
_A.M._

It's a calling card, to the name of Sister Francesca from Sant'Appolinare in Milano.

It almost makes Regina laugh. 

She smiles, and Francesco babbles. 

At least someone is still alive. 

And no one died, this time around.

Some days later, she hears Primo's car coming up toward the house. 

She has kept the card. 

She will show him. She wants to watch him, when he reads it. 

"I bet he will pinch his lips" she tells Francesco with a laugh "Act as if it didn't mean anything to him. He will pinch his lips.". 

Francesco babbles back. 

She knows it deep in her heart. 

La famiglia va sempre protetta.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Grazie per tutto e per la passagia_ : thanks for everything, and for the lift.
> 
> And here goes the end of this thing. I'm not sure I'm happy with how it turned out, but since Regina doesn't nearly have all of the cards to see clearly what Primo is talking about it's just uuuuuuuh frustrating. It's like, Regina, darling, you really _don't understand_ what Primo is saying. That's you projecting your own experience onto someone else. Primo, it's a whole other mess.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading through it. I can't tell you how glad I am to finally share it entirely. I hope you liked it <3
> 
> [NB: Primo's pov will be published soon as the second part of this serie. Hopefully it will clear up a few things (and also it will bring in way more angst than necessary - because Primo doesn't tell everyone everything. Of course he keeps things to himself, who do you think he is?)]


End file.
